A new collision between AI and education. Where is the way of artificial intelligence education technology in China?

  Recently, the 5th China Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Qingdao in 2019. Top experts in the field of artificial intelligence at home and abroad gathered together and conducted a new round of thinking collision and brainstorming. Artificial intelligence technology has gradually penetrated into various industries, bringing changes to human society and economic development, and leading the changes of people’s production, life and learning methods. At the end of last month, UNESCO officially released the Beijing Consensus — — Artificial Intelligence and Education ",proposes that all countries should formulate corresponding policies and explore effective strategies and practices of using artificial intelligence to promote educational innovation.

  China is a big country in the application of artificial intelligence education. What kind of new collision will happen when the hot artificial intelligence meets the education that the whole people pay attention to? Not long ago, the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Deepening the Reform of Education and Teaching and Improving the Quality of Compulsory Education in an All-round Way" clearly stated: "Promote the integration and application of information technology and education and teaching". To some extent, it can be seen that artificial intelligence education has entered the top design, which will bring changes to the ecology of traditional education.

  In this context, which direction is China’s artificial intelligence education technology going? Have you made enough preparations? What are the remaining problems? These are all questions worth discussing.

  All parties actively promoted the development of artificial intelligence education.

  In recent years, "promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence and education and promoting educational reform and innovation" has become a high-frequency official statement about artificial intelligence education.

  "Artificial intelligence technology is affecting education from the dimensions of education ecology, education environment, education mode, education management mode and teacher-student relationship," said Gu Mingyuan, honorary president of China Education Association and a senior professor at Beijing Normal University. "With the deepening integration of information technology such as artificial intelligence and big data with classroom teaching, personalized learning and burden reduction and efficiency improvement have been realized."

  In 2017, the State Council issued the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan", which explicitly deployed intelligent education as an important application field to promote the construction of intelligent society. It has become a broad consensus of the whole society to use artificial intelligence technology to meet the development needs of educational modernization and promote the reform and innovation of educational organization form and management mode.

  The academic point of view is that artificial intelligence can solve educational problems at three levels, namely, compensatory education for special people, alternative education for routine business and adaptive education for service personality development.

  Hong Wen, vice president of Yuanpei Education Science Research Institute, said that most people in China have realized the profound impact of artificial intelligence on education. From the government to enterprises, they are actively promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence and education, promoting educational reform and innovation, and giving full play to the advantages of artificial intelligence. He believes that the in-depth development of artificial intelligence education technology can largely solve the multi-dimensional problems of uneven education, shortage of teachers, excessive teaching burden and insufficient learning efficiency. The current situation of artificial intelligence education in China can be summed up in eight words: "broad prospects and numerous followers".

  There are many hidden worries behind the grand scene, and data is a big problem.

  Artificial intelligence is booming in the field of education. According to statistics, the number and amount of financing in the field of artificial intelligence education in China have ranked first in the world in the past year, and the industry has made breakthrough progress in technology research and development and industrial application. It seems that everything about artificial intelligence and education seems optimistic. However, in the real world, things have never been so simple.

  For artificial intelligence, in order to achieve the design goal, AI first needs to solve a problem, that is, data. Data must be entered into the algorithm so that it can "learn" the environment and determine which results are "good" and "bad".

  At present, it is a recognized problem that there is a serious shortage of data reserves in China’s education industry. Compared with other artificial intelligence application industries such as finance, medical care, manufacturing, etc., the single data type, limited data scale and insufficient real validity of data in the education industry are the bottlenecks in the development of artificial intelligence education. Artificial intelligence relies on huge data support. To achieve the deep integration of artificial intelligence and education, multi-dimensional and massive educational data storage is particularly important, which requires not only structured data including students’ grades, attendance records, course plans, homework and comments, but also unstructured data that can reflect students’ learning behavior and teachers’ teaching process. At the same time, how to deeply analyze and understand data is also a big problem. Compared with other fields, it is difficult to restore the actual process of education simply by relying on big data.

  "Because the education level of each place and the acceptance level of children are very different, in order to truly teach students in accordance with their aptitude, we must carry out a series of processes such as truly restoring the learning trajectory, accurately recording the learning process, and helping students to maximize their potential through AI classroom technology tools." Wang Wei, president of the Smart Education Division of Good Future Group, said.

  Hong Wen also said that the whole data of students’ learning currently being used in China’s artificial intelligence education industry is indeed uneven. It seems that there is a huge amount of data, but there are many problems in careful analysis. On the one hand, the data is outdated or unreliable, on the other hand, there is no communication and communication between the data, resulting in closure. He believes that in order to develop the industry, we must first solve the data problem in order to make the model more accurate and learn more effectively.

  Only after education can we be intelligent, and we still need to build up basic research.

  It is a challenge and a new attempt for all employees that artificial intelligence promotes individualized learning of education from theoretical research to practice. Which way should the technical direction go? What research is essential? People in the industry have their own opinions. As far as the research focus is concerned, artificial intelligence education at home and abroad has shown different directions at present.

  Foreign research on artificial intelligence education mainly focuses on big data, robotics, deep learning and so on. Domestic research on artificial intelligence education mainly focuses on natural language processing, speech recognition, image recognition and so on. It is worth mentioning that the United States and other countries have made great efforts in pedagogy, psychology, emotional education and cognitive research, and achieved certain results. However, these basic studies are still blank in China.

  Because human emotions are very rich, and learning is a complex process, students will have complex and changeable emotions such as boredom, pleasure, depression and fear in the process of learning. How to know students’ emotions in time, effectively grasp students’ emotions and give corresponding emotional guidance by artificial intelligence technology is an important link in emotional education, and it is also an urgent problem to be solved in the application of artificial intelligence education. Huang Yan, CTO of Good Future Group and President of Open Platform Division, believes that in the long run, artificial intelligence needs to deepen the recognition and understanding of human emotions and emotions, and integrate with human brain science, cognitive science and psychology related theories. The research of these issues will have a far-reaching impact on the development of artificial intelligence education.

  Strategic deployment is coming, creating a new ecology of smart education.

  At the end of August, at the opening ceremony of the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced that on the basis of building five open innovation platforms in the early stage, 10 units were newly approved to build a new generation of national artificial intelligence open innovation platform, and wisdom education was among them. This shows that the country has great expectations for artificial intelligence to promote educational reform and innovation, and for promoting the deep integration and development of artificial intelligence and education.

  It is understood that the construction of the national open innovation platform for smart education will meet the needs of education reform and innovation and the development of the education industry, and provide all participants in the industry with full-scenario, full-process and full-cycle smart education service support from technology, solutions to industrial applications. The open platform will be divided into three parts: smart education technology empowerment platform, smart education solution open platform and smart education industry open platform.

  If the technology of artificial intelligence education is regarded as "the process of upgrading all the way", then the problems at the infrastructure level must be broken through by the whole industry. Only with it can we have the basic data of artificial intelligence education, such as students’ learning data, teaching resource data and teaching management data. The openness and sharing of these data make people have a clearer understanding of artificial intelligence+education.

  Huang Yan said that as the contractor of the national new generation artificial intelligence open innovation platform for smart education, many technologies have been commercialized in the future. In the future, we will further build a community of knowledge sharing and experience exchange in the education industry, guide small and medium-sized enterprises and innovative entrepreneurs to carry out product research and development and application testing based on an open innovation platform, integrate resources in technology, industrial chain and finance, and create a new ecology of smart education. (Science and Technology Daily reporter Li Yan)

Interview with Director Zheng Xiaolong | Creation should tell the story of "people"

The closing battle report of TV series The Story of Xingfu came one after another. After Empresses in the Palace, who has been tossed and turned for 11 years, Zheng Xiaolong brought an excellent work with both reputation and popularity.

Few directors can expand the audience to all ages like Zheng Xiaolong, so that groups of different generations can find sympathetic emotions and characters in his works. Similarly, few directors can make their works last forever, constantly adding new audiences to the original basic disc, and their works are always new, always keeping the pulse and temperature of the same rhythm with the times.

Zheng Xiaolong, born in 1953, has been directing since the early 1990s. His works in different periods, such as Peking Man in new york, Golden Wedding, Empresses in the Palace, legend of miyue, Red Sorghum, Emergency Doctor, Meritorious Service, etc., have almost covered audiences after 60, 70, 80, 90 and 00, and he is a well-deserved national director. At the same time, he is also a literary and art worker who is very concerned about how individuals survive in the changes of the times. Under the focus of the camera, they are all concrete "people", and the "play meat" filled in the drama framework is also concrete and subtle details. He always believes in a foothold. "Emotion and truth are common, and I mainly tell the story of’ people’."

01

The Story of Xingfu: Dead Water and Breaking.

The realistic TV series The Story of Xingfu, directed by Zheng Xiaolong and starring Zhao Liying and Liu Wei, has closed recently. As a long-lost rural theme work in the domestic drama market, the first broadcast of the drama set off a viewing craze. The prime-time TV live broadcast attracted the top two attention, and the online broadcast was less than an hour. The market share of the whole network drama reached the top, and the real-time broadcast market accounted for 11.46%. At the same time, because of the portrayal of realistic contradictions and the exposure of human weaknesses, it has repeatedly caused heated discussions on social platforms such as Weibo. In the whole broadcast process in The Story of Xingfu, it occupied the top spot in the lighthouse TV drama feature broadcast market for 22 consecutive days, and ranked third in the 2022 TV drama feature broadcast before closing. These steady and steady data all show the amazing national popularity of this work.

The Story of Xingfu was adapted from Chen Yuanbin’s novel The Legend of Autumn Chrysanthemum. At the beginning, Zheng Xiaolong took a fancy to this story. "It mainly tells the awakening of a woman’s self-awareness and legal awareness. Under the environment of emphasizing the rule of law, literary and artistic creation is of certain significance to the construction of the awareness of the rule of law. I think it is very good." Wanjiazhuang, as a famous star village with ten miles and eight townships, has reached a certain level in material accumulation. However, due to its inherent small-scale peasant ideology and clan consciousness, this village has become a "stagnant water" and gradually has the trend of "one word at a time". "So the theme of our story is to hope that people will pay more attention to the construction of spiritual civilization and legal civilization after the completion of material civilization construction. Because there is no progress in spiritual civilization and the rule of law, this’ rich’ will not grow. "

And the heroine’s happiness is the "breaker" of Wanjiazhuang’s stagnant water.

In the initial casting stage, Zheng Xiaolong decided to let Zhao Liying play He Happiness. "We worked together in the filming of Golden Wedding in 2006, and she played many rebellious third daughters in it. She was so stubborn. Moreover, she is born in the countryside and is no stranger to rural life and the state of farmers. "

Zheng Xiaolong believes that the character He Happiness comes with a "halo". Of course, "halo" is not an illogical protagonist halo, but "He Happiness has a basic personality, and she has a simple sense of justice, fairness and equality." As a rural woman with a low education level, she was so happy that her sister was married. She insisted on an apology and was pointed at by the villagers. However, Wanjiazhuang, whose clan consciousness is solidified, needs such a foreigner to break the deadlock. "Because she doesn’t understand the process of the village construction and the prestige of Wanshantang, the village party secretary, she just thinks that I can apologize if I am wrong, but you have to admit it if you are wrong. You have to apologize."

He Xingfu threw a bench over and smashed the head of Wan Chuanjia, the son of the village party secretary, which prevented the marriage and caused trouble. His in-laws were anxious to apologize to the village party secretary, and her husband, brother-in-law and sister-in-law were also wronged and anxious. On the other hand, Zheng Xiaolong used a series of long shots to show the attitude of He Happiness as a new wife. She changed her clothes, tied up her long hair, skillfully picked vegetables, and packed things for cooking. When her husband questioned that she was still in the mood to eat, her attitude was also obvious: the sky fell and she had to eat, and then she went to seek justice after eating.

"Maybe the audience will be more worried about saying that female stars or famous actresses can’t get down and dress up ugly, but in reality, it can’t be glamorous. You work in the countryside and your daughter-in-law is running a family. You have to be energetic, right?" Zheng Xiaolong admired Zhao Liying’s energy. "If she didn’t understand it, she couldn’t shoot it. She didn’t rely on skill, but brought her true nature in, so you will feel particularly comfortable when she performs."

Since the launch of The Story of Xingfu, many viewers’ comments and barrage have been related to "grieve" and "bring your own antihypertensive drugs when watching the drama". The initial marriage-making incidents, land disputes and compensation for land expropriation, including the protagonist’s experience from rural to urban, are all full of realistic entanglements. The material construction of Wanjiazhuang Star Village is indeed rich enough, but the popularization of rule of law awareness and spiritual civilization construction seems to be uncivilized. The main line of the story is how to build the rule of law on the basis of material construction. Happiness is the main thread of this torrent, and her personal progress and growth is also a metaphor for the follow-up of rural spiritual civilization and the rule of law. The anger of netizens, to a certain extent, is also an affirmation that the content of the series is close to real life. Zheng Xiaolong also recognized this point. "We must conform to this creative attitude of realism. Now telling rural stories is to conform to the changes and cognition in the countryside and have a life atmosphere."

At the end of the story, He Xingfu promoted the construction of ecological civilization in Wanjiazhuang, developed environmental protection tourism industry, controlled sewage treatment, broke the original clan pattern, popularized the concept of legal system, and became a new generation of rural revitalization leaders. Behind the destruction of this stagnant pool is not only Zheng Xiaolong’s thinking about the current rural spiritual civilization and legal system construction, but also his inherent sense of responsibility as a literary and art worker. "Creating this thing makes me feel that I can say something and express something that I think is meaningful." He wants to tell the story of a rural woman’s growth, and reflect the fate and struggle of thousands of ordinary people in Qian Qian. This concern and gaze on the little people has always been a humanistic feeling of Zheng Xiaolong’s social responsibility.

02

"Feminine consciousness" not only represents women.

The Story of Xingfu has been at the forefront from the beginning to the end, and the whole network urged him to get a happy divorce and start a career. In addition to the characters and plots in the play, there is also director Zheng Xiaolong who was brought to the hot search by real-time comments.

In fact, it’s not long since he was widely discussed by netizens and audiences last time-during the period when the epidemic was banned at the beginning of the year, Empresses in the Palace became a drama and background sound for many people. Since its launch 11 years ago, the ideological trend has changed, the concept has been updated, and the audience has iterated. However, the popularity and discussion of this drama have lasted for a long time. Under the "study" of the younger generation of netizens, an independent "Zhen Xue" has even been derived, which is specially used to analyze characters, plots and subtle scenes, including the production of expression packs and network hotspots.

However, in the eyes of Zheng Xiaolong, who is nearly 70 years old, these new things and fragmented interception analysis are all "distant" and he doesn’t understand them. In the 22nd year of the new century, he still maintains his own work rhythm and relatively "old-school" habits. Only when talking about creation will the chatterbox open, "What are the 100 questions? I can’t even answer it. TV plays and movies are montage art, and they are flowing pictures, not watched frame by frame. When I shoot, I will not think that this drama will have such a big impact in reality. "

From Empresses in the Palace’s "Red Sorghum" and "legend of miyue" to The Story of Xingfu, several representative works of Zheng Xiaolong are all based on the clue of women’s growth and awakening, and are completed by the whole construction of the characters, so as to criticize and convey his inner thoughts and voices. However, the growth of women, or the awakening of gender-limited consciousness, is not that he deliberately caters to the creative standards of the market. Instead of telling the story with a specific group, he chose a reference sample to tell the story of everyone in the society, age and living environment where the sample is located. "Emotion and reason are common, and I mainly tell the story of’ people’."

Empresses in the Palace stills

For example, Empresses in the Palace criticized the feudal and backward marriage system. Zheng Xiaolong said, "I discussed this matter repeatedly before filming, and I told the media that it was critical. But after it was broadcast, many people said that it was a matter of the workplace. I was so dizzy. I never thought that the workplace would be like this." He recalled that mentality more than ten years ago. "At that time, for a long time, it seemed that everyone thought the harem was beautiful and luxurious. Many girls wanted to cross into the harem and run to be concubines for the emperor." "The emperor is a big stallion, marriage in this case, how can you have a single-minded emotion? Impossible. "

The realistic theme does not mean that you must shoot modern dramas, which is also Zheng Xiaolong’s consistent thinking. "You can also shoot historical stories with a realistic attitude. The theme and your attitude are two different things." What Empresses in the Palace conveyed was his criticism of the feudal and backward marriage system, while legend of miyue is another kind of realism-historical materialism, which contains the awakening of women, the germination of the consciousness of family and country and the concept of equality. "Miyue is a concubine of Chu. She gradually developed a sense of home and country around the king of Qin, and she also had a critical awareness of the hierarchical bloodline theory and hereditary system, so she would take risks and return to Qin to pacify civil strife and lay the foundation for Qin Shihuang to unify China. Including the Qin Dynasty’s award for military merits, rather than hereditary, these are also the seeds of equality. "

"legend of miyue" stills

He doesn’t think it is necessary to convey specific ideas through specific themes, and there is no need to limit the gender or identity background of the protagonist. "In fact, people who engage in literary and artistic creation do image, and there is a saying that image is greater than thinking." Zheng Xiaolong is a person who came from the initial period of China TV series, and his attitude is still simple and plain. "After you have done your image well, many people will give it something to think about. For example, when Cao Xueqin wrote A Dream of Red Mansions, he didn’t think so much, he just truly reflected the society. Later, Comrade Mao Zedong said that A Dream of Red Mansions was a mirror of feudal society, and it became a mirror of feudal society, which was the understanding given by later generations. A lot of thinking things don’t mean that we have thought it through in the early stage of creation. We just do a good job in the image. As for the interpretation, how big the subsequent impact is, this is not something that can be thought of at the beginning. "

After being created, the female images in Zheng Xiaolong’s works began to have a lot of interpretations, some of which were even quite different from his original creative ideas, which he had never expected in his creation. However, whatever Zhen Xuan, Mi Yue or happiness, behind their awakening of female consciousness and independent consciousness is actually the awakening of human nature-an awakening of equality, struggle and the rule of law. This has nothing to do with gender, but belongs to everyone’s right consciousness. There’s a line in The Story of Xingfu, which Zheng Xiaolong especially picked out and spoke it again. "Distinguish right from wrong through law, clarify truth through law, and popularize social fairness and justice through law. I think it is very important, because we want to build a society ruled by law. This is also what I want to convey through this drama. "

As for the arguments, contradictions and conflicts intercepted by the fragments, and the remarks urging a happy divorce, they all belong to the endowed "thinking", which is the part that literary and artistic creators can’t control after the completion of their works. Zheng Xiaolong tried to digest the gap between himself and the young audience. "I think literary works still need a little nutrition, and there must be emotional things in them. If the general direction is right, you can."

03

The significance of realism

After decades of film and television drama, Zheng Xiaolong, which has become a benchmark in the industry, has maintained a stable output, but it is not a "high yield". For the production and polishing of the script, including the preparation before starting, he has to spend a lot of thought and effort to dig the details. Even at this age, the vitality of creation and strong desire for expression are still shining on him.

The Story of Xingfu finalized Zhao Liying, and it also experienced some twists and turns in the middle. Because the actor was pregnant and the script was revised, it was almost more than a year before and after. "After the script was revised, the actor also gave birth to the child and sat down for a month. This is settled."

In the era of fast food, Zheng Xiaolong’s process of polishing the script and preparing the details can be said to be very "burning money". "I have to collect ideas and make field trips. I am particularly concerned about this matter and go to see Anhui local Huizhou architecture. For example, when drilling a well, I have to ask if there was such a photo at that time. The arrangement of the wedding venue for the couple, were they like this at that time? Is the construction of rural houses like this? Moreover, I have to ask the original owner (many details), because a lot of the photos we took are real scenes, and the interior is also real scenes. I am afraid that the art will be wrong. "

At the beginning, in the interview during the broadcast of Golden Wedding, Zheng Xiaolong also mentioned the "obsession" of scene restoration. After the script was polished, it was the preparation of the group, from a food stamp to a bus, which was arranged exactly according to the set points of that era. "Realism" is the key point he has always stressed. Only when the literary image reaches a certain level can the audience’s thinking be attached. "As long as you make a good image, it will have an impact on reality. As long as you make it true and reasonable, it will have an impact on reality."

Stills of "Golden Wedding"

"Influence on reality" is the sense of social responsibility that Zheng Xiaolong’s generation of literary and art workers insisted on. When a work is filmed, it is not just for fun, but for the audience to laugh. It has to be meaningful and effective in reality. As for how long and how wide this role can be played, it is uncontrollable, but at the very least, it must have a little effect.

Even now, there are some records of old reports in the evaluation of Zheng Xiaolong by Zhihu and other platforms: "The broadcast of" Desire "triggered an unprecedented upsurge of national audiences, and actors such as Li Xuejian, Zhang Kaili and Huang Meiying also became popular throughout the country. At that time, in order to watch "Desire", people with TV sets were crowded into the station almost every day. Even the Ministry of Public Security said that thieves did not come out to commit crimes because they were waiting to watch "Desire". "

Zheng Xiaolong couldn’t help laughing when he mentioned these sensational influences. This is the pride of literary and art workers and the great affirmation of a director who has devoted his life to it.

Speaking of Empresses in the Palace’s overseas export and cultural communication, Zheng Xiaolong once again emphasized the importance of realism. "Truthfulness, telling a good story about China’s history, telling a good story about China now and telling a good story about the daily life of China people, I think this is all possible. In particular, telling the story of the daily life of ordinary people must be authentic and have universal typical significance. "

Of course, we also asked Zheng Xiaolong what he thought of the current shoddy and suspended film and television dramas. He replied very quickly, "I don’t watch it. I don’t think it looks good. I don’t watch it. I can’t watch it, and I’m not affected."

This national director, who is nearly 70 years old, just wants to tell his own story-a story about every specific "person".

Written by Gu Xiang

— THE